The Undertaker has delivered a lot of Tombstone Piledrivers in his day, but he hasn’t always been very good at it. In an interview on Why it Ended with Robbie E, the man who took the very first Tombstone at Survivor Series 1990 — WWE Hall of Famer Koko B. Ware — shared the story of how the move came to be, and how the Dead Man almost made him a dead man by nearly breaking his neck.
From Koko:
“I love Mark to death, and I’m still proud of The Undertaker today. He really, really has [taken] his gimmick a long, long way. But Mark was, you know. I was the first one to take the tombstone, but he was a little excited because that was his first time doing it, and I almost kind of cracked my neck a little bit doing it. And I heard all kind of little cracks and stuff like that.
“But I knew Mark was trying to get over… I got dropped on my head, to be honest with you. Yes. But thank God for working out, it kind of helps you. Now, if I had a weak head or something like that, I probably would have broke my neck big time. I was the first one that he used it on. [We didn’t practice], he just said hey. They wanted him [to do it]. It was kind of like a piledriver, but he just had my head between his legs too far that you could see my head, and if he would have had my head between the fat part of his thighs, then it wouldn’t have hurt.”
Here it is in GIF form, captured forever in its awkward majesty.
Hey, we’ve all gotta start somewhere, right?
(transcription h/t to Money Wrestling Inc.)
